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[The Headliner]

This is one of the worst tales of amoral tabloid media scum I've ever heard.

Full story by The Guardian

Bulletpoints for the linkshy:

• 13-year-old girl is abducted on her way home from school
• Tabloid journalists hack into her voicemail account to listen for anything juicy
• When her mailbox fills up, journalists delete messages to make room for more gossip
• Noticing that it's no longer full, her family gratefully assumes she's alive and clearing space
• Their raised hopes are dashed when her body is found decomposed and naked in the woods
• Family grants painful interview to tabloid journalists, unaware of their prior meddling

The deletion of the messages also caused difficulties for the police by confusing the picture when they had few leads to pursue. It also potentially destroyed valuable evidence.

According to one senior source familiar with the Surrey police investigation: "It can happen with abduction murders that the perpetrator will leave messages, asking the missing person to get in touch, as part of their efforts at concealment. We need those messages as evidence. Anybody who destroys that evidence is seriously interfering with the course of a police investigation."

Is there no low to which these vermin will not stoop?

The most telling part about the industry as a whole is that although the News of the World were quite blasé about having gained access to the voicemails, police didn't take action against them at the time - "partly because their main focus was to find the missing schoolgirl and partly because this was only one example of tabloid misbehaviour. As one source close to the inquiry put it: 'There was a hell of a lot of dirty stuff going on.'"

[Hazzy]

It's gross. World would be a much better place without tabloids. They get attention for big stuff like this, but I think more harmful is the constant dripping of racist, xenophobic, distorting bullshit. I think that damages society a lot more, and most don't seem to realise its happening.

[The Headliner]

Police apparently contacted the families of the two girls killed in Soham by Ian Huntley about evidence that they were targeted by the News of the World's same private investigator.

Here's the front page of tomorrow's Independent.

And in what could be the story that turns the whole subject nuclear, the BBC has tweeted this:

McCann family spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, interviewed by police after raising fears of suspicious activity on phone, @BBCNewsnight learns

[Hazzy]

rikwilliams Rik Williams
Breaking news. Daily Mail explodes in self-righteous fireball as NotW hacks Andrew Sachs voicemail.

[The Headliner]

Asked about possible signs that his voicemail had been accessed by a third party, Sachs claims to have known nothing.

[Fan]

I hope this gets pegged on Murdoch.

[Lawman]

this says it all about journalists, bunch of fucking bastards, imagine hacking a missing kids phone and then deleting messages to sell a few papers, thier interferance could have delayed the police, makes you sick, hopefully murdoch has got the point that the people in the uk are all soo fucking angry at him right now, what a dick!

[The Headliner]

Saint Murdoch has decreed that this Sunday's News of the World shall be the last.

Sky News reported that NI chief executive Rebekah Brooks was in tears as she told staff the title is to close.

Labour MP Tom Watson, who has been highlighting the phone-hacking scandal at the paper for two years, said: "Rupert Murdoch did not close the News of the World. It is the revulsion of families up and down the land as to what they got up to. It was going to lose all its readers and it had no advertisers left. They had no choice."

And so we all live happily ever after. Justice has been done. The bad guys have fallen.

Well, at least Andy Coulson will be arrested tomorrow. But what of Rebekah Brooks? Has Murdoch sacrificed the News of the World to take the heat off her?

[Ethan]

Not all journalist are even this proactive, most of the news industry no longer even goes out to get their own story. Still it is disconcerting.

[Fan]

I hope he shuts down Fox News next.

[The Headliner]

I doubt Fox News is going anywhere, but Rupert Murdoch's son James, the deputy COO of News Corp, could be facing criminal charges on both sides of the Atlantic.

Another development in the scandal is that millions of emails have been deleted from News International's archives to allegedly impede investigations.

Meanwhile here's some TV media fun:





I'd like to have seen the second one hosted by someone capable of mediating a televised debate.

[The Headliner]

A few bits and bobs for those like me who are struggling to keep up with the biggest and fastest moving story of the year:

According to The Mirror (arch rival of NOTW's grieving sister paper The Sun), the reporters for the deceased tabloid apparently hacked the phones of 9/11 victims. That's victims of the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks, not nine out of ten victims of everything ever, though at this rate it wouldn't surprise me.

And according to The Telegraph (competing with Murdoch paper The Times in the non-redtop tabloid division), a NOTW reporter was instructed by then-editor Rebekah Brooks to prance around in a Harry Potter costume three hours after the World Trade Center collapsed. Meanwhile, the Church of England is embarrassed by its investment in News Corp and is threatening to withdraw £4million if Saint Rupert doesn't fire Brooks over the phone hacking.

Also check out comedy writer/actor John Finnemore's comments on BBC Radio 4: (Transcript here)



And today, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown made his own revelations about the ways News International had targeted himself and his family through hacking and identity fraud. From the recap in The Guardian: "Details from his infant son's medical records were obtained by the Sun, who published a story about the child's serious illness." Guess who was editor of The Sun when they broke that news of baby Brown's cystic fibrosis?

And now it's all just getting silly.

[Hazzy]

SunOnSunday.co.uk has been transferred to News International.

[The Gopher]

This is absolutely disgraceful.

Murdoch needs to see some ramifications from this - and this story should be WAY bigger than the Weiner scandal of last month... I'm disgusted.

[The Headliner]

In the interest of fairness, it should be noted that on today's front page The Sun denies accessing medical records before exposing baby Brown's illness to the world. In their version of events, they got the scoop from the father of another child with cystic fibrosis before exposing baby Brown's illness to the world. So that's okay then.